June 2020 - Live and Speak Your Truth - Pondering Point 1

June 2020 - Live and Speak Your Truth - Pondering Point 1

      Even before the protests erupted across our nation due to excessive and deadly force by law enforcement this topic was planned for exploring this month.  Acknowledging that folks in authority often do grasp more power than they are allowed by the ‘job description’ of their positions.  We’ve seen it across our nation and really the world for so very long.  In many ways it gets back to integrity which starts with our personal lives.  If we are authentic with ourselves and others in our inner circle then we are setting ourselves up to do so in other areas of our lives.

Many years ago I worked with a man who was married with three children.  He wasn’t happy.  It had nothing to do with his wife, children or his marriage in general.  Like so many others in my generation he had done all of the right things.  He got married, went to college, got a good job, provided a home and all needful things for his family.  They lived well.  I would say a bit above middle class.  We could tell something was weighing heavily on him.  At work he seemed to be operating with a cloud over his continence.  He talked to our manager behind closed doors.  He seemed happier.  The next week we started off with our typical Monday morning meeting where we were invited to hear a special message from Mike.  He got up and with tears in his eyes he sobbed through his admission of being gay.  He told us how it had torn him apart for more than 20 years and he just couldn’t keep living a “lie”.  We rallied around him, group hug and all.  We assured him that it didn’t change anything about our relationship with him.  We became his core support group as he went through the process of telling his wife.  She was very understanding as was his extended family.  From what I remember, Mike and his wife stayed together but lived separately.  Any more details than that I didn’t need or want to know.

The freedom and release that Mike had with his confession was an integral part of his journey of living authentically.  This is a journey that can’t be rushed or forced upon someone.  As the Bible says, there is a time and a season for everything.  We, however, first must be honest with ourselves before we can begin to see the dim illumination of our path forward no matter how much time must pass before our next steps.

Write a list of 10 things you are holding back from speaking your truth to the people you are close with.  

It doesn’t have to be huge things.  It can be something like finally telling your elderly Mother that you really can’t eat the fried Okra drenched in grease anymore.  It may be apologizing to your children for something you never really owned.   

Example: When my daughter was in second or third grade her teacher had sent homework home with the instructions clearly written out.  My precious daughter sat at her little homework desk and just started at her paper.  I thought she was just being stubborn and not wanting to do her homework.  She started crying.  My heart melted and I scooped her up and told her we would do it together.  It’s then that I realized the instructions were written in cursive which she couldn’t read.  The teacher had done this so that parents would be involved in the homework assignment.  I’ve never forgotten how all of it made me feel.  When my daughter was a young adult I apologized to her for this with the hope she had the maturity to forgive me.  She laughed and said she didn’t even remember it.  I did.  That’s the point.  It had been something I regretted and didn’t speak my truth about it until I felt she was old enough to understand.